The last installment in The Realignment Program’s re-posting of its series on public employee unions is here, and we turn from defending the idea of public employee unions to thinking towards a more expansive, hopeful vision of how progressives can promote public sector unionism.

Continuing our re-posting of The Realignment Project’s series on public sector unions, here’s part 2, in which we learn that that public sector workers are not overpaid, but that private sector workers are underpaid. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of the public sector workers of Wisconsin and their struggle to maintain their human right to organize, I’m re-posting The Realignment Project’s three-part series in defense of public sector unionism over the next three days:

– in part one, we learn some of the background of why even some progressives are uncomfortable with the idea of public sector unions, and why all progressives should support the right of public workers to unionize.

– in part two, we examine the statistical illusion of the “public sector premium,” and learn how the difference between public and private sector pay is actually the difference between union and non-union.

– in part three, we move from a purely defensive standpoint to begin articulating a new vision for how public sector unions can be brought into the center of progressive government.

The current state of American public policy can best be described as a stalemate: progressives have been stalled on further stimulus efforts; at the same time, conservatives came into power pledging opposition against any cut to a single-payer government health insurance program, and there’s little public stomach for virtually all spending cuts.

As I’ve discussed before, a major reason for this stalemate is ultimately due to how people think about public policy. In reality, neither progressive or conservative ideologies are hegemonic within the American electorate. Instead, public opinion is very much a mix of contradictory and paradoxical tendencies – we want to spend more money on the poor, but are opposed to welfare; we think foreign aid should be cut to a level that’s several times larger than current spending.

In this situation, policy victory goes to finding narratives that present our policies in a way that aligns favorably with public thinking, and in designing policies that lend themselves to narratives that flow with, not against the grain of public opinion.

The Realignment Project is a group blog dedicated to the discussion of current political events, political strategy, ideology, and history. Co-Founders: Steven Attewell is a PhD student in the history of public policy at UC Santa Barbara, studying the history of direct job creation programs from the New Deal to ... Continue reading →